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For anyone who has wondered if it's worthwhile to plant the cloves of store-bought garlic that are starting to sprout, the answer is a yes, but a qualified yes. In general, buying seeds or plants that were intended to be grown for a garden harvest is usually a better idea than relying on produce aisle leftovers to grow more edibles. The watermelon seeds you spit out last summer that sprouted in the compost probably came from a hybrid variety and will not grow true. The same can be said for many fruit trees that don't develop the same tasty fruit as the parent, most notably apples. Avocados propped on toothpicks in water are dead easy to start but may take up to 15 years to...

Related "Los Angeles County Arboretum & Botanic Garden" Articles

For anyone who has wondered if it's worthwhile to plant the cloves of store-bought garlic that are starting to sprout, the answer is a yes, but a qualified yes.
In general, buying seeds or plants that were intended to be grown for a garden harvest is...

Landscape designer and garden writer Rosalind Creasy was an authority on edible gardening long before it became fashionable to rip out your lawn and grow food. The author of the pioneering "Edible Landscaping" will discuss growing, harvesting...

Recent rains mean amateur and professional mycologists in Southern California can head outdoors again with renewed enthusiasm. Mushroom expert Gary Lincoff, a longtime teacher of plant studies at the New York Botanical Garden and author of books including...

It’s fall. Have you hugged your hugel today?
In these years of drought, rainwater catchment makes more sense than ever. Rain costs nothing and is free of hard minerals and chlorine. Plants love it.
The 50-gallon rainwater barrels that were all the...

Landscape designer Nancy Goslee Power has left her mark on Grand Avenue, the Los Angeles County Arboretum & Botanic Garden and the gardens of the Kidspace Children's Museum in Pasadena.
But the Norton Simon Museum sculpture garden in Pasadena...

How to tackle fall planting in Southern California during the third straight year of drought and the diminishing likelihood of El Niño storms this winter? At the very least, Los Angeles gardening experts agree that planting in the fall is...

In Southern California, spring is a good time for gardeners to start thinking about planting vegetable beds and perusing the hundreds of tomato varieties that are available.
Curious about rare plants with strange titles like Black Sea Man, Chile Verde...

Perhaps the most concise way to summarize Michael Feinstein's work over nearly 30 years as a prominent keeper of the flame for the Great American Songbook is to say that the Great American song title that least applies to him might be Duke Ellington and...

Akif Eskalen steps through the dense, damp leaves in a wooded neighborhood, scrutinizing the branches around him. He's looking for evidence of an attack: tiny wounds piercing the bark and sap dried around them like bloodstains.
The victims are box...

Last October, as one of the 50 participating sites in Wildflowering L.A., the Los Angeles County Arboretum in Arcadia tore out nearly an acre of lawn and planted native wildflower seeds. Now tidy tips, clarkia, California poppies, lupine, yarrow and...

Pasadena-based landscape designer Laramee Haynes often reuses pieces of broken concrete in gardens as an alternative to pouring a slab of concrete. "Broken concrete can be reused over and over again," Haynes said. "It has a very organic...

Dear SoCal Garden Clinic,
My garden, as well as many of my neighbors', is overrun by nutgrass. I have tried the product recommended by a local garden store, with not good results. It is expensive, and I tried it two times, but the nutgrass grew back with...

San Gabriel Valley residents are being urged to take precautions while outdoors after tests confirmed West Nile virus activity in three cities in the region, authorities said Tuesday.
Positive tests were confirmed in samples taken from mosquitoes in...

By George, half a century on it’s still a good thing when Gershwin music is front and center. During the next few days two Southern California orchestras are turning their focus to brothers George and Ira.
On Saturday, Michael Feinstein conducts the...

The magic of the Gershwin songbook swept the Los Angeles County Arboretum on Saturday, when Michael Feinstein and the Pasadena Pops Orchestra, together with guest vocalists Catherine Russell and Tom Wopat, closed the 2013 season in glossy, old-school...

Ric Berryman got this action shot of a bird coming in for a landing on a cactus at the Los Angeles County Arboretum & Botanic Garden in Arcadia last month.
He used a Nikon D600 camera with an AF-S Nikkor 70-300mm lens.
Each week, we're...

Saturday in the park with Bernadette (Peters, that is) will highlight the summer season at the Los Angeles County Arboretum announced by the Pasadena Pops and its new principal conductor, Michael Feinstein.
Peters, whose many starring turns on Broadway...

When the Pasadena Pops kicks off its summer season of concerts at the L.A. County Arboretum in Arcadia on Saturday, it will be led by a music director and conductor who has never even played in an orchestra, much less conducted one.
It's a risky move...

Michael Feinstein will be bringing his brand of class and oomph to the Pasadena Pops for three more years. The musician and orchestra have renewed his contract as the group's principal pops conductor through 2016.
Feinstein kicked off his first season...

Certified arborist Rick Wheeler stands beneath a persimmon tree in a Torrance backyard and surveys the bare branches. Then he raises his shears and carefully starts snipping.
He spots a crossing branch. "We'll get rid of that," he says. Then he...